Teleportation and Transformation: approaching the 'impossible' through storytelling and technology by Eirini Sourgiadaki

This research delves into the enduring human desire for immortality, omnipresence, and boundless existence, contrasting with the finite nature of human life. Employing language tools like metaphor and analogy, the project explores the metaphysical realm embedded in everyday culture, investigating the in-between moment of teleportation and transformation. This moment, often overlooked, is a threshold of change and ambiguity, prompting questions about the body's presence-absence in time and space. The research methodology remains open, evolving organically through exploration, experimentation, and engagement with hypnosis, meditation, storytelling, and somatic practices. In a parallel exploration, the study draws inspiration from the historical origin of the term "Metaphysics," tracing its roots to Aristotle's works beyond the physical world. While acknowledging the dualisms inherent in metaphysics, the research embraces entanglement and recognizes the contemporary relevance of metaphysical inquiries in new materialism. Navigating the nostalgia for the past and the future, the study examines metaphysics as both a connection and a separation, akin to conjoined twins, contributing to ongoing philosophical conversations about existence, agency, and the interconnectedness of the material world.

A6

not-Superman, scary, Magic School Bus, anything and everywhere, dinosaurs, microbe, speed of light, vehicle, go aboard, tornado, in a flash, solar system

I see the cards, yes, but what do I know about them?

Superman can fly, this is for sure. That’s all I know about him. The man on the left is not Superman, the one on the right is. When he wants to fly, he puts a suit on.

I have never heard of Alice in Wonderland.

I don’t know what Star Trek is, it is scary.

But I know something similar: the Magic School Bus, where students get transformed into dinosaurs and the Bus itself gets transformed into anything and travels everywhere. It can do anything! It can turn into a plane, a hot air balloon, it shrinks and becomes tiny like a microbe, it can travel with the speed of light, it grows and becomes huge, it can turn time back to the past and also forward to the future. It is a bus of course but has eyes and mouth.

If an accident happens with one of its wheels, it has an automatic repair system, just like this, easily, without even using any tools. The Magic School Bus can travel to the nucleus of the Sun. It is the perfect vehicle for me. It changes its colour and can turn into a lobster.

I could draw it for you. It is different than a magic stick, because it is a bus, This means that you can go aboard, so be inside it. Then it will turn into a tornado and will travel away in a flash, maybe to another solar system.

Device: tornado

Transition: instant, flash

Interface: school bus

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Eirini Sourgiadaki - Teleportation and Transformation: approaching the 'impossible' through storytelling and technology - 2023

A6